Immigrants

Millard Fillmore en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millard_Fillmore was President of the United States at the time of Foucault's experiments in France. And, like Europe, the United States saw a tremendous technological and industrial growth during this time. German and Irish immigrants were flowing into the United States, bringing with them new ideas and great energy. The Irish immigration began in 1851, following the great potato famine. During the course of this migration, lasting until 1860, over 900,000 Irish immigrants would enter the United States. The U.S population was 23 million in 1850, with fifteen percent of it living in cities. ~ Page 49

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Rural depopulation, however, was something of a chimera. Some of it was the result of a steady stream of emigration to North America, and in each of the three years after 1847 more than half a million emigrants crossed the oceans. . . . There was a continuity, even though a cursory reading of William Cobbett’s ‘Rural Rides (1830) would cure the reader of any illusion of rural comfort or tranquility. The lives of the labourers were often dirtier and not less wretched than those of their dogs. They worked on the land because they feared and hated the spinning mills or, even worse, the privation of the poor house. The unknown was also the father of fear; when some manual labourers were being moved from north Devon to Kent, at the fiat of some landlord, they asked if they were ‘going over the water.’ ~ Page 155